A higher kind of magic
by Taero
Summary: When you're alone the world can seem a lonely place especially when you're a young boy with the hopes of that world on your shoulders, a demon to kill and you're woefully unprepared, enter those from another world perhaps tide can be pushed back after all


This is a story I started about a year ago, if you didn't know it's a crossover between the world of Harry Potter and that of Full Metal Alchemist, I'm sure you can see how they'd fit together ;) I've taken it down, had a read through and added a change here and there so hopefully it flows a bit better, it's a short chapter I know but bear with me. I'm a university student and have societies and clubs to attend to but if I get a review or two on here to show it's being read then I'll kick it into gear :)

As always all copywritten characters are the sole properties of their owners, no profit is made from this story, if you see it hosted anywhere else please let me know. If anyone likes my story and wishes to be a beta tester then drop me a line, until then adieu.

-Taero

Prologue

Some say that there are a finite number of possibilities, that there are certain roads that one must tread and very few decisions we must make to determine our paths. If this were true then all it would take would be one wrong move, one wrong decision and it would be over, your dreams of the future turning to nightmares. As we move further down this spiraling path our options dwindle and pitfalls about, the light grows dim, kept alive by a worrying few without the hope it needs to blossom.

Like a flower in winter, the potential for salvation is there but it is battered from all sides by harsh reality desperately holding out against the blackness of oblivion. A flower may survive for a time and eventually flourish because, it knows, in a primitive way _its_ salvation is coming in the form of spring when it can spread its petals and reach tentatively towards the strengthening sun.

What then, if the winter was to be eternal? The cold and hopelessness everlasting and the light, only a distant memory of a past, long forgotten by many all facing a future of uncertainty, one path only to walk without hope of rescue, the final walk of the damned. This is the future that faces the world of one small boy, the one small flicker of light left to a desperate society who flocks to it trying to block out the darkness that grows ever stronger and ever more powerful. But instead of kindling the flame, nurturing it and helping it to grow they stifle it, choking it in their need for warmth.

For now a young boy, Harry James Potter, is the last hope of the wizarding world and this hope is slowly turning to despair as all he knows turns to ashes…as the world and all the people he loves ready itself for the end…

…or is it? Perhaps there are not, as they say, finite possibilities but endless ones, cacophonies of chaos each striving to be heard fracturing every time a decision has been made, be it in the past, the present or even, in some, the future…They exist side by side, it has been theorised, and under normal circumstances will never be aware of each other but under certain circumstances, perhaps the rules may be bent. If one person were to be removed from this world then another must fill it. After all…there must be equivalent trade, it is the law…is it not…?

_Harry stood rooted to the ground the world unreal and distant as he watched the events unfold in slow motion, it was surreal, like the old shows his aunt and uncle loved to watch as they lauded the past and bemoaned the present, almost comical he laughed wildly to himself eyes wide and unseeing. This couldn't be happening he moaned silently willing himself to move and yet there was nothing he could do as he watched his godfather fly backwards unkempt hair flying, robe streaming. Knocked off his feet by another woman…who was she…he couldn't think straight he just needed a moment, a moment to think but there was no reprieve. Even without his hearing he recognised the curse and smiled manically as his worst thoughts were realised, she hadn't been aiming to kill him, oh no for that she would have simply used the killing curse, a streak of sickly green and an eternity of rest. Instead Sirius Black, his one and only true family, fell backwards eyes meeting with his a pleading look almost begging as though he expected Harry to come forward and save him, to be the saviour that he was supposed to be. Through a veil he fell, one that shimmered and twisted in mid air surrounded by runed inscriptions glowing with an otherworldly light warping the space around it blowing in some invisible wind. It had an ethereal beauty he mused, still in that calm centre of shock that cocooned the senses, and the gate it hung from seemed to send out pulses of power as it took Sirius from him but only he seemed to feel them as he stood dumb stricken, strange images and knowledge, circles drawn in the sand and what looked like transfiguration but it was too fast and too muddled. They coursed into his mind slipping silently, ingraining themselves, and disappearing as though they too drew a veil over themselves like that they had came from._

_He moaned as reality returned at full speed and with it sound, Bellatrix Lestrange, he remembered her name now the years had not been kind she seemed to almost glow from within with childlike glee. She turned to him smiling sweetly the expression sitting sickly on her stretched features a macabre impersonation of real feeling._

"_Your turn now ickle Potter…the master will be pleased…he shall reward me"_

_She shivered in delight as she faced him and raised her wand Harry's' vision wavered as a shining light and roar of noise blasted past him and then it was over…Saved again he mused as he dropped to his knees, saved again while he stood helpless, never again he promised himself, he swore to himself, swore by the death of his family, his godfather and parents long dead and felt ice clamp itself around his heart._

_On the other side of the gate hands reached forth, black faces in a sea of darkness, their smiles horribly eager and childlike, and dragged Sirius Black shouting in defiance through the portal but true to form Sirius was not one to give up. Wand in his hand he was quickly running through every spell he knew of which, given his predisposition to tricks and his years running in exile was nothing short of amazing. Flashes of light, swirls of flame and lightning, arctic blasts and streams of acid, unearthly howls and even the unforgivables used in the moment of need, slammed into their targets, beating back the creatures as they smiled eagerly at him hands reaching out voices promising eternity. Effortlessly they glided towards him, in his desperation he tried to summon a patronus the spell failing on his lips before he managed to throw up a shield shimmering gold which to his horror they slithered through. Sighing he lowered his arms in defeat and allowed them to come closer, closer and closer still as the cooed beckoning him. He glanced up a crazed gleam in his eyes; the creatures paused for a moment puzzled at the newcomer to their realm and one or two backed away. He was unlike any they had seen before even the strange young man of short stature and now he seemed to have lost his fear however their pause lasted only a second before they continued._

_Sirius looked into the distance an expression of regret on his face as he raised his want above his head and began to incant, the words lost in the sounds of the spirits, for that was what they were of course, around him. As they reached him with hands outstretched his voice reached a roar the cadence horrible to hear and he swung his wand downwards with an effort that warped the very air around it slamming the point down into the ground…he stopped, kneeling a smile twitching on his lips and then the world around him was engulfed in light as the magic in his body detonated. The final attack of a wizard known to almost none and never used its very utterance certain death for the caster as every gate to his magic opened at once destroying the very cells of the body. The darkness of the portal seemed to retreat as the creatures were swept asunder dissolving into black motes of shadow. Unsure of this new event the entity of the portal faltered confused before reaching out morphing the motes into a hand and crushing the explosion of energy drawing it into itself along with the mortal…the realm shook as the portal outside glowed, once, twice then three times._

There it was, a gap that was never meant to have existed, a profound wrongness with a need to be filled. The collective entity of the gateway reached out and found the nearest beings to match this power, not just in raw energy but in talent and skill, and began to draw them to itself. The void must be filled…equivalence must be maintained…


End file.
